In the 1930s, once-great World War I pilot Roger Shumann performs as a daredevil barnstorming pilot at aerial stunt shows while his wife, LaVerne, works as a parachutist. When newspaper reporter Burke Devlin arrives to do a story on the Shumanns’ act, he quickly falls in love with the beautiful--and neglected--LaVerne.
Direction
Sirk's last black-and-white film—every shadow drips with contempt.
Cinematography
Curtis's camera makes barnstorming look like existential suicide.
Acting
Stack's hollow-eyed desperation; Malone's trapped-animal stillness.
Director
Douglas Sirk
Rock Hudson
Burke Devlin
Robert Stack
Roger Shumann
Dorothy Malone
LaVerne Shumann
Jack Carson
Jiggs
Robert Middleton
Matt Ord
William Schallert
Ted Baker
Alan Reed
Colonel Fineman
Alexander Lockwood
Sam Hagood
Robert J. Wilke
Hank
Christopher Olsen
Jack Shumann
Troy Donahue
Frank Burnham
Phil Harvey
Telegraph Editor
Eugene Borden
Claude Mollet
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Sirk called this his most personal film because Faulkner's story captured 'the sadness of American mechanics'—the broken men who built the century.
The aerial footage is real 1930s barnstorming footage Sirk acquired; Stack did his own cockpit scenes and vomited between takes.
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